2013. This year is like a transforming machine for me. I feel like a mount of sand, or maybe dirt, that has been continually processed to be a concrete. I feel almost literally being sifted, sloshed, messed up, spinned upside down in a wheel, until my texture changed and ready to function for something else, something impossible before.
On early months of the year I got sick a lot. Chronic ulcer had sent me to Emergency Room several times. You can sleep with fever but you can't sleep with a stabbing pain. What could ease the pain was only a strong painkiller like morphine that injected straight to your vein. I used the highest level of my pain tolerance but it did not help. This ailment takes a lot of me. My family seemed helpless about it. They have no idea how it is. All they could do was yelling at me to take a better care of my self as if it is my fault. I take the medicines prescript for me but I didn't get better. The illness kept coming back. What helped me psychologically was the mental support from a dear friend. She also helped by telling me herbs that could possibly heal and once I started to take those natural medicines instead of the drugs from the hospital, I really feel better and the ulcer pain comes less and less frequent.
Those times, it was hard to be productive since recovery times make me lay in bed almost all day and can not really focus. There was no commercial projects coming to me except that my main job as a resident writer in a website and teaching dance to only one group and really underpaid. I still felt thankful that at least I still had jobs.
Then came the 4th month of the year: April. A friend, a dance major student in IKJ (Jakarta Institute of Art) asked me or more exactly "offered" me to take a part as a dancer in her upcoming project for graduation. That is just what I always dreamed of! To dance, to perform, and especially for a graduation project of IKJ dance student. Fear and nervous-feeling consumed me for a while. This is what I want, but it also means I was going to step to a new circle again, and absolutely being the dumbest or the least advance dancer than those other dancers I was going to dance with. I did face awkward moments when I did not understand what she wanted me to do. I did stop in the exploration time because I was not sure if I was doing right. I did got really sick due to exhaustion. There was a time of feeling mentally burnt out, especially when my parent's house got packed up with a new family moved here. That was really too much, but I could not stop coming to dance practices. It took a lot of energy to go to the dance practice almost everyday while I kept writing articles and teaching, but in the same time it has become my new circle, my comfort-people, and exhausting myself feels a lot better than being home. 5 months like that, I endured. From new circumstances I developed new perspectives, how to see things. I started seeing this undesirable home-situation as a challenge to keep creating. Artists should be fluid, keep creating or better, inspiring, even in difficult times.
The show was over and I came back to normal life except the comfort I once had in this house that is now also "it's over". Suddenly the company I worked for stated a new regulation that limits my writings, results in the decreasing of my income. No other jobs coming; but I felt thankful, at least my health has really improved. I am a lot healthier than the previous times, so I can do many things! I came back to casual dance practices with a friend who always have a lot of choreography in her mind for us to realize them. One problem with this friend is, we never get anywhere but the little space in her house. Each time she makes a choreography, I always wish it would really be a piece and we can make a video or perform somewhere.
On early months of the year I got sick a lot. Chronic ulcer had sent me to Emergency Room several times. You can sleep with fever but you can't sleep with a stabbing pain. What could ease the pain was only a strong painkiller like morphine that injected straight to your vein. I used the highest level of my pain tolerance but it did not help. This ailment takes a lot of me. My family seemed helpless about it. They have no idea how it is. All they could do was yelling at me to take a better care of my self as if it is my fault. I take the medicines prescript for me but I didn't get better. The illness kept coming back. What helped me psychologically was the mental support from a dear friend. She also helped by telling me herbs that could possibly heal and once I started to take those natural medicines instead of the drugs from the hospital, I really feel better and the ulcer pain comes less and less frequent.
Those times, it was hard to be productive since recovery times make me lay in bed almost all day and can not really focus. There was no commercial projects coming to me except that my main job as a resident writer in a website and teaching dance to only one group and really underpaid. I still felt thankful that at least I still had jobs.
Then came the 4th month of the year: April. A friend, a dance major student in IKJ (Jakarta Institute of Art) asked me or more exactly "offered" me to take a part as a dancer in her upcoming project for graduation. That is just what I always dreamed of! To dance, to perform, and especially for a graduation project of IKJ dance student. Fear and nervous-feeling consumed me for a while. This is what I want, but it also means I was going to step to a new circle again, and absolutely being the dumbest or the least advance dancer than those other dancers I was going to dance with. I did face awkward moments when I did not understand what she wanted me to do. I did stop in the exploration time because I was not sure if I was doing right. I did got really sick due to exhaustion. There was a time of feeling mentally burnt out, especially when my parent's house got packed up with a new family moved here. That was really too much, but I could not stop coming to dance practices. It took a lot of energy to go to the dance practice almost everyday while I kept writing articles and teaching, but in the same time it has become my new circle, my comfort-people, and exhausting myself feels a lot better than being home. 5 months like that, I endured. From new circumstances I developed new perspectives, how to see things. I started seeing this undesirable home-situation as a challenge to keep creating. Artists should be fluid, keep creating or better, inspiring, even in difficult times.
The show was over and I came back to normal life except the comfort I once had in this house that is now also "it's over". Suddenly the company I worked for stated a new regulation that limits my writings, results in the decreasing of my income. No other jobs coming; but I felt thankful, at least my health has really improved. I am a lot healthier than the previous times, so I can do many things! I came back to casual dance practices with a friend who always have a lot of choreography in her mind for us to realize them. One problem with this friend is, we never get anywhere but the little space in her house. Each time she makes a choreography, I always wish it would really be a piece and we can make a video or perform somewhere.
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